Okkervil River - The Stage Names

I wrote this up about three or four weeks ago, but, due to a conflict of interest issue, it wasn't able to make it into the paper. Anyway, the album has been out for a while, but it's certainly a good one, so even if you don't read through this...go out and buy it. Now.

Music is under the knife. Engineers like plastic surgeons. Clip, snip, splicing the sound, enhancing and crafting the whole into something perfect and perfectly different. The best of modern technology, the scalpel at it’s finest. And there’s more than one person to whom it seems a travesty to leave the likenesses of Magnum and the former lo-fi minds on the floor of the operating room. Normally, I tend to agree – and then I heard “Stage Names,” the newest release by Okkervil River.

While long-time fans will immediately find the production of “Stage Names” rather disconcerting even as the first notes come tumbling from the speakers, the whole of the album, while it may be polished and bears heavily the effects of the engineer’s touch, is something exceptional that maintains the darkness of the previous discography.

Once again, Sheff rises to that established position as a artisan with his words – the rampant and unabashed nostalgia that has become characteristic of Okkervil appears once more, driven by lyrics macabre and reminiscent, images of violence and prolonged suffering of both Sheff and those portrayed in song.

On “Title Track,” Sheff moans of a seedy underground rank with vice: “And with her morning shoot / Her evening clothes / Don't call her a prostitute / Well, she ain't one of those / Just call her a proper little statue / Come unfroze.” While on the final track of the album, “John Allyn Smith Sails,” he recounts his own self-destruction, “I tried to make my breathing stop…So when my mom and John came in I would be cold.”

Yet, regardless of the tragic, the grisly, the overall feeling of each one of these tracks is hardly one of threat or peril; rather, one of a prolonged remorse and that longing for the shattered stability once possessed.

On “Black Sheep Boy,” we heard the raw moans of Okkervil front man Will Sheff, the content hardly manicured, raw emotion reflecting the doleful words. And while the emotion of Sheff’s lyrics has scarcely been tampered with, the overall sound has shifted along with the production, taking a decidedly poppier sound on the first few tracks of the album.

On “Unless It’s Kicks,” though Sheff laments, “What pulls your body down, that is quicksand / So, we climb out quick, hand over hand / For your mouth's all filled up,” the uncharacteristic upbeat feel and poppy guitars and soaring combinations of horn synths and tambourine compliments almost lead in two different directions that despite their contrast are natural.

(But that’s nothing next to the bell tones, shining bright in major keys, dulcimer resonations that stand alone before the entrance of Sheff’s lamentations.)

That is not at all to say there is nothing left of the original Okkervil. The second half of the album (and certainly the section that fans of the band will enjoy most), there is a regression to the sound of classic Okkervil, to the soft-spoken Sheff and dark folk-indie-pop (you probably didn’t expect that genre, did you?)

The most noteworthy tracks of the album burnish side-by-side at the onset of the second half of the album: “Plus Ones,” and “Girl in Port.” There’s not entirely too much to be said of these two tracks except that they exemplify the best of Sheff’s qualities as a wordsmith and the talent of the whole of the band to fit together seamlessly.

To be quite frank, there is little to nothing wrong with the album as a whole with the exception of the seemingly mismatched musical styles of the beginning and the decidedly polished quality of the album as a whole (if you really want to hold that against them).

Record Review: Mice Parade - Mice Parade

An exceedingly pretentious review (trust me, it's written to be as such) I wrote up (in about 1/2 hour) about a month ago for an "unpublished writing sample." Why post it, then, you might be asking? Well, mainly because I can.


It’s the idea of form. Care not to rupture the fine skin composed of the flexing tones, rhythms and patterns swarming below the surface, and the overall integrity of the musicianship. It’s the idea of an organized structure that blends unique parts effortlessly. And Lord knows it’s damn hard for any musician to accomplish. Still, in the latest effort Mice Parade (AKA James Pierce and assorted co.), it’s done quite well with only minor setbacks.

“Last Ten Homes” pumps out layer upon layer, one following the next out the floodgates. And yet, regardless of the complexity, between the desperate repetitions aching to be heard just one more time and the cryptic drawling of Pierce, all that have passed are two minutes. It’s absolutely gorgeous, the standout of the album.

And in the end, there surfaces the sounds of a honky-tonk piano/keys with the plunking of guitar strings that sound like the strumming of a harp all amid the distant stomps and claps that echo throughout the whole. Breaking into a choir of the same voice, bass and treble, pipes on the organ follow the dual drum sets and the immediately ascending and descending lines of the keys.

“Double Dolphins on A Nickel” follows with haunting whispers with the nearly androgynous inflections of a lone female voice rasp above and contradict with the full and vibrant colors of the acoustic. Pierce’s voice is introduced to the mix, a foreigner, and continues the pattern of refined conflict.

The element that exists throughout the album, the intertwining of similar patterns and rhythms, pushes the album forward relentlessly, most notably between keys/piano and guitar on “Circle None.”

There is really nothing that this album actually does wrong – it maintains the cohesion of a quality record while its musicianship and innovation never fails to impress. However, there are a few elements that are notable in that lack of strength among a very strong album, a few white spaces noticeable because of their lack of content.

The first track, “Sneaky Red,” rather than build as the rest of the album does, bursts in uninvited with both the laments of a girl and the powerful rock sounds that hardly flow into the rest of the whole. It seems out of place with the whole, despite the fact that it flows nicely into the following track. Whether the first track in its standoffishness is intentional is no doubt impossible to gauge, yet in either case, it almost stages a downfall for the structure of the subsequent whole because of the tone assumed.

Still, and here is the paradox of the comparative structure, because of the fact that the album finds itself similar to such a degree, at times it becomes a monotonous and rather repetitive listen. And even if that similarity had been intended, it cannot save the fault from infecting itself.

To My Fellow Atlantantananians:

This may come as a surprise to some of you, but it is indeed hot outside. I know, trust me, I didn’t believe it either – and then I went outside at 8:30 A.M. this morning and died.

Something is dreadfully wrong with this weather, my brothers and sisters (family for just another week, praise the Lord, amen) – it simply isn’t natural, much like cockroaches, Twinkies and various other snack cakes made out of sponges.

And really, would someone mind filling me in on what in the hell is a smog alert? In Chicago, we have wind – I assume "smog" may be a Southern term for wind? Or does it perhaps refer to that nasty gray blanket that may have well come from your grandmother’s attic that appears to have substituted the clouds and blue stuff?

I don’t actually care, but I know that it makes me hot (in every sense of the word) and rather angry to boot.

Anyway, to get to the little substance that this blog will have: in my quest to not die in the heat, I was browsing through some releases and happened across a little tidbit of information on CNN.com just a few minutes ago. Apparently, an earthquake with the magnitude of 7.5 on the Richter scale has just hit, “the Indonesian island of Java, shaking tower blocks in the capital of Jakarta and causing people to run from their homes in panic. There were no immediate reports of casualties or major damage from the quake…”

So, this is how I like to think of the heat: it may be hot, but it’s not a 7.5-massive-building-crumbling-behemoth-of-an-earthquake. Does this make me a bad person for drawing this conclusion? Yes. But that’s all right. Mainly because I'm pretty sure I'd prefer the rampant chaos to your goddamn "smog."

The Darjeeling Limited

Oh, Wes Anderson, I adore you.